IFC Midnight Acquires Brandon Cronenberg's 'Antiviral,' Father and Son Interview at Cannes (VIDEO)

Thus Brandon Cronenberg, whose debut feature “Antiviral” premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, shares plenty of horror DNA with his father David, who admitted during a father-son interview with Toronto Film Festival’s Cameron Bailey at Cannes (video below) that he and his son share an interest in the sciences, animals and the natural world. “I had no dynastic ambitions for Bran particularly,” he told the audience. “Whatever he wanted to do was going to happen naturally.” Croneberg pere said he was less a creative mentor to his son than the film’s producer, Niv Fichman.

While the 69-year-old father easily charmed the room, Brandon, 32, was far more circumspect, at least in public. He started out making shorts and finished his first feature just before Cannes. This is the first time father-and-son features have played the festival in the same year. While Entertainment One acquired ahead of the fest Rob Pattinson-starrer “Cosmopolis,” which was in competiton at Cannes but came away with no awards, IFC Midnight just acquired U.S. rights to “Antiviral.”

“The film manages to skewer our culture’s obsession with celebrity,” said Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects/IFC Films, “while also delivering more than a fair share of chills and gruesome body horror. We look forward to working with Brandon and his team.”

Produced by Rhombus Media with the participation of Telefilm Canada and the OMDC, “Antiviral” will be released in Canada by Alliance Films and in the UK by its subsidiary Momentum Pictures. IFC Midnight is a sister label of IFC Films and Sundance Selects, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks Inc.

Here’s the synopsis:

ANTIVIRAL follows the story of Syd March, an employee at a clinic that sells injections of live viruses harvested from sick celebrities to rabid fans who wish to partake in the ultimate form of communion. Syd supplements his income by selling illegal samples of these viruses on the black market,smuggling them out of the clinic in his own body. When he becomes infected with the disease that kills superstar Hannah Geist, Syd becomes a target for collectors and obsessed fans. He must unravel the mystery surrounding the starlet’s death before he too meets a morbid end.